ReadWriteWeb

Opera has just unveiled the newest version of its mobile web browser: Opera Mobile 9.5.  The software, which will be officially previewed at next week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, introduces several enhancements to the prior version including faster speeds, a re-designed UI, and Opera Widgets. The Opera Mobile upgrade will be available for the major mobile operating systems (Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Linux) as both a standalone browser and as a software development kit.

Yesterday MobileMonday announced the 25 nominees for its Barcelona Peer Award. The selection of the winning mobile startup will take place during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain in ten days on February 11, 2008. The nominees for the award represent early stage and emerging start-up companies from 25 different world cities. We're reprinting the list here because some really cool, mostly unknown startups have been nominated and given how big we think the mobile web will be this year, any one of these companies could make a huge splash in 2008.

The latest podcast at ReadWriteTalk is an interview with Adam Taggart, the Director of Product Marketing in the Yahoo! Mobile Group. In the podcast, Taggart discusses with RWT host Sean Ammirati "an overall uber-message" that Yahoo! is currently pushing for Mobile Web. Taggart emphasized that Yahho's approach to mobile is all about scale:

"...we are now in the process of developing a mobile ecosystem that is intended to serve eventually billions of mobile consumers."

According to our network blog last100, Google unveiled a new user interface today for its iPhone Web apps. Daniel Langendorf reports:

"With Google for the iPhone, users will get an improved UI optimized for the touch screen, customization of default tabs (easy access to favorite applications), faster Gmail (email automatically show up, no refreshing needed), a speedier Calendar (including a new month view), and iGoogle."

Yahoo! co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang was on stage today at CES and he showed a fascinating glimpse into the future of Yahoo. Yang outlined a product strategy that takes the simplicity and all-in-one portal approach that Yahoo! is famous for - and pushes it into the digital life arena by utilizing email, social networking, mobile and widgets. In Yang's words, Yahoo! aims to be the "most essential starting point for your life". The name for this new product suite will be Life!.

Dan Farber has a great write-up of Yang's speech on ZDNet, so in this post I'll summarize that and give some analysis on Yahoo's future.

From the people who brought us social bookmarking site Mister Wong comes Beam it up Scotty, a mobile file sharing service that launched at the Le Web 3 conference a couple of weeks ago. Beam it up Scotty is a way to send pictures, music, videos, documents or any other file to any mobile device for free, but is it really worth it?

What Web applications and trends will make it big in 2008? In this post the RWW authors ruminate on the current trends in Web technology and look forward to what 2008 might bring us. Topics include Google, semantic web, online advertising, recommendation systems, Facebook, digg, open standards, Mobile Web, search engines, and much more!

So check out our predictions for '08 and please contribute your own in the comments. Also you may want to review our track record for 2007 Web predictions.

The NY Times has another of those 'Mobile Web isn't living up to the hype' articles that have become so familiar since, oh, the late 90's when WAP came onto the scene. The NYT quotes statistics from Rethink Research, stating that data will make up only 12 percent of average mobile phone revenue per user in 2007. Further, surveys by Yankee Group show that "only 13 percent of cellphone users in North America use their phones to surf the Web more than once a month, while 70 percent of computer users view Web sites every day."

I have to admit I've only just become a Mobile Web convert, after purchasing an iPhone on my recent trip to the States. I now use the Mobile Web frequently, to check RWW and other sites during the day when I'm out and about -- or simply when curled up in the sofa at the end of the day, trying to relax.

So with all that in mind, it'd be interesting to survey how many RWW readers use the Mobile Web. Please participate in our poll below:

This week we ran a contest asking you to tell us your favorite Mobile Web apps. We got over 50 comments and there were 5 Mobile Web apps that clearly stood out, with multiple mentions. Here then is the top 5, which will be useful to people new to the Mobile Web and wondering what all the fuss is about! We've also listed all the other Mobile Web apps mentioned in our contest post, at the bottom of this page.

1. Gmail Java app for mobile phone: this was noted by 18 people in the comments of our original post. This app is a Java-based version of Gmail for mobile, which features IMAP sync, attachment viewing. Phrases that were associated with Gmail for mobile by our readers included: "just works", "simplicity", "functional", "useful", "a joy to use".

Commenter "mr white" said of the Gmail java app: "This *is* clearly the path of the future. All your e-mails, all the time, everywhere. No more tedious synching with this outlook / that outlook and the webmailer. Now bring on calendar and contacts."

Nathan commented: "A very nice frontend onto a very nice service, and it does a rather nice job of reformatting files for the tiny screen. That's the sort of feature you don't actually appreciate until you're out in the countryside with nary a hardline in sight and need an address that was wrapped up in a .doc in your inbox that you forgot to print."

2. Google Maps for Mobile: mentioned by 11 people. This too is a Java app, which Google released in December 2006. There is also a full-featured version, including GPS Integration, which can be used on Windows Mobile PocketPCs and smartphones. According to our readers, utility is the key factor for this app.

Phil commented: "...my favourite app has to be Google Maps for mobile (on my Sony Ericsson k800i). I use it a lot, from finding my way about places (I've lived in London a year and still have no idea where I'm going most of the time) to turning to the satellite view and impressing friends with the detail I can get on my mobile. The clarity of the maps, one of the main apps benefits that really shines in the mobile version, negates my need for a real map any more, though any time I'm stuck without signal I'm probably also lost too. I'd recommend Google Maps to anyone (with an unlimited or generous data plan and 3G, the maps can be pretty big!)."